Antimagic

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It reduces the magical energy of the wielder, and disrupts the spells and magical abilities of those hit. Natural abilities and divine invocations are not affected.

The antimagic brand causes weapons to interfere with the spellcasting of anything wounded by them.

Effects

Monsters struck by these weapons gain a temporary spell failure rate, while players simply lose MP with each strike. This effect works on anything that uses magic, including silence-proof targets such as demons and orbs of fire.

Unfortunately, so long as you are wielding a weapon of antimagic, your max MP will be reduced by 2/3, making it something that caster characters should be cautious about wielding carelessly. However, a character who has already exhausted his MP pool is free to switch to it mid-combat, and in some cases the effect may be worth the sudden loss of the majority of your casting capacity.

Occurrence

The antimagic brand is Trog's special brand, so gifted weapons may have it. The brand otherwise is fairly rare, and unable to be obtained via a scroll of brand weapon.

Vine stalkers also possess a unique antimagic bite attack which functions similarly. Finally, the Enfeeble spell will always inflict antimagic, regardless of resistance or EV.

Desirability

Though it deals no extra damage, antimagic weapons are extremely useful against magical opponents. A well-enchanted weapon in the hands of a capable fighter will be able to cause most of an enemy's spells to fail, which amounts to semi-paralysis. As such, antimagic weapons can reduce the threat posed by powerful end-game opponents such as the lords of Hell or orbs of fire dramatically; you just have to get into melee range with the enemy first.

Formulas

Every time you attack a monster with an antimagic branded weapon, they gain damage×8/(HD+1) turns of the antimagic status. This status gives them a dur/(4+dur) chance to fail to cast spells and waste a turn (where dur is the duration remaining on the status). Every time a monster attacks you with an antimagic branded weapon, it drains a random amount of MP up to the damage dealt, but weighted toward half that amount.